Fucking Mystic

Courtney Trouble is obviously at the forefront of attempts to remove the old silo-ed barriers that separate pornography into carefully segregated niches - a vestige of the old movie houses ("All Male Cinema" for example) and the rack-jobber old videostore model. I found her "Fucking Mystic" surprisingly accessible, given the auteur's "in your face" punk styling reminiscent of those bygone Sex Pistols days of the '70s, and it is recommended to anyone open to cutting-edge Adult content.

Trouble's vehicle and access point is casting of TS star Chelsea Poe, whose similar but more almost-mainstream (the "almost" is my exaggeration of course) work for Nica Noelle makes for an interesting comparison to her performing in a Trouble production. The beautiful trans-female remains an enigmatic screen presence, on the surface ripe for crossover in these days of adventurous new entities in the content production realm such as Netflix and Amazon, but perhaps not quite ready for prime time.

Hour-long video (well-paced, unlike the 3 and 4 hour features produced by many of Trouble's competitors such as Madison Young or even Joey Silvera) focuses on Poe's decision, after a strong intro hump session with a bosomy bedmate, to move to Oakland. Unidentified lover gives Chelsea a medallion, which proves to be a magical aphrodisiac, in the corny old Joe Sarno porn-liftoff manner. So in the Bay Area everybody of every possible gender/sexual persuasion is drawn to Poe and the rest is history.

Besides the beautiful Daisy Ducati, several plus-size femme porn stars bed down with Chelsea, including April Flores and Trouble herself, giving Trouble's work yet another dimension besides merely gender- bending. Other than a plethora of tattoos, which are already overwhelming the landscape in conventional 21st Century porn (see: Joanna Angel most notably), Trouble is clearly campaigning for a casting out of traditional notions of "beauty". Unfortunately the Fashion Industry is thriving like gangbusters and celebrity worship at nearly an all-time high (one would have to go back to the tabloids infatuation with Liz & Dick in the '60s for a comparison). So Courtney's casting and featuring of regular and even grungy looking people as her Warholian superstars probably has no more impact than the shenanigans of a season of "American Horror Story" on TV.

Along the way, besides giving transsexuals in the form of Poe equal time, Trouble includes explicit Gay Sex when Chelsea has an impromptu vinyl listening session (great touch for a life-long vinyl aficionado like me) with B Nefarious and Ruckus that turns into a no holes-barred three-way, and Trouble herself trusses up Poe on a cross, ball-gags her, puts on the auteur's favorite fetish of latex gloves and delivers hardcore BDSM content, just this side of fisting. She manages to cover the entire waterfront of kink and niche porn in somehow tasteful fashion (no Golden Showers or the like).

Finale was disappointing for me, as we're treated to a 6-minute orgy with over a dozen bodies writhing around in a pile, presented with dissolve montages and superimposed images that incorporate '60s Underground Cinema into the feature - I saw enough of that at Midnight screenings back in the '60s to last a lifetime. But through it all Poe is impressive, delivering four effusive money shots (but not using her penis for humping, rather strapping on large dildos when she becomes dom to some girl) that Peter North or Steven St. Croix would be proud to deliver.

Perhaps intentionally, Trouble's filmmaking prowess is crude, with many focus problems and frequent "Stabilizing" legend printed on screen that I thought was a subliminal message but is instead some video glitch. But it's worth a look, and perhaps, to paraphrase the Coen Bros., the future is here.